P.F.S. Post

Maximum Post-Avant

Adam Fieled (editor, Philadelphia, Pa): Apparition Poem #1613

#1613

Follow Abraham up the hill:
to the extent that the hill is
constituted already by kinds
of knives, to what extent can
a man go up a hill, shepherd
a son to be sacrificed, to be
worthy before an almighty
power that may or may not
have had conscious intentions

where hills, knives, sons were
concerned, but how, as I watch
this, can I not feel that Abraham,
by braving knives, does not need
the one he holds in his rapt hands?

c. 2010

Jordan Stempleman (Iowa, USA): "But the tail end is too powerful to relax..."

The slob who dates the mother
can never remember who sheared
the musical return of an unwavering afternoon, dries himself
in response to the hard fought
saying: seeing you like this meanswe're here enough to begin introducing ourselves again.

c. Jordan Stempleman 2007

Adam Fieled (editor, Philadelphia, USA): Two Poems

THE FALL (FOR MARY HARJU)

I look at a bridge through the window.
I am standing, naked, while you paint.

I feel that every moment is new, nude.
I am in my body as it actually is, I am

in time as it moves forward, from in
side my body, responsive to drafts

coming through the window, mirrors
which show me what I know too well

to know, what I have lived through
and with, what I have seen but not

been Other to. Sunlight glistens-
we fall upwards, without question.

FROM THE LAST DROP

I saw no one at the coffee shop

I had coffee that tasted like ash

I opened a volume of Beckett

I stared into a wall-size mirror

I smoked a soul-coughing butt

I redid my stubborn Irish mind

I was home in twenty minutes

I have waited years to write this

c. Adam Fieled 2008

Mary Walker Graham (Boston, USA): "Kissing in Cars"

I can't find my keys,
lighter, wallet; I've lost my
arches in the dusty windows,
way in the cathedral grasses,
naming things: heavy/slow
eyes smiling, even in sleep,
steam rising from the grates,
even on a warm day. Not that
I understand it, but I wanted
to buy a yellow dress;
I wanted the streetlights,
blinking once, then not anymore.

c. Mary Walker Graham 2007

Kristen Orser (Chicago, USA): Three Poems

THE BED HAS NO HEADBOARD

I'm balanced is something
I want to tell you. Another thing,
if you don't stop running
the water I won't ever stop considering
your halo or that which reminds me
of your halo. When I pander, push
me, and when I push just remember
the faucet's wish list.

WISH LIST

Just imagining looking up, never realizing
the boundaries you have set for yourself.
How many ceilings can you have before you suffocate
from thinking inwardly. I have an outer shell which doesn't
remind me of anything, besides I'd rather cry on the couch
holding my arms against me, begging my arms to never let me go.
I leave because I care. I am the way planes fly.
There are reasons I have never felt tense in my shoulders,
and I keep writing them down on paper, and then forcing them
in-between the muscles and bones which make up this frame.
I ache, pray for mountains.

CLEAR IN THE BRISK, LAUGHING DAYLIGHT

The view from above, far above,
as if we all sat on shoulders gazing down at what was,
beautiful, and yet fleeting. A comic
scene. Your head ballooned with a yawn, a single
yawn followed by others. Your eyes were as big
as they ever were, your eyes were as big as now,
as the remainder of the season, of the past few years.

The trees kept leaving on their own like a glass
of water sitting on a wooden banister outside,
on some porch: the water- the sky- condensation- inevitability.

c. Kristen Orser 2009

Steve Halle (Illinois, USA): from Cessation Covers

crooks on the inside means suicide
crops on the downside, pesticide
boy on the crib-side, infanticide
favor eyes over eyesight into homicide

she asked me to untie her,
chase away the lice, the worthy
few isn't me, which heaven sees-

This gender-bender of a city
has me dealing in androgyny.
How am I expected to see
bliss beyond these words
of war poured out of your
mouth? I lie livid at the feet
of news, magazines,
not finding reasons why,
forgetting every second
that God did exist before Nietzsche.

c. Stacy Blair 2008

Andrew Lundwall (Illinois, USA): "Chicago"

chicago wind hair
spontaneously making noise
out there it's out there
plucked me from crazy wilderness
the sticks sniffling stoogey
o wild flower inebriated as a loon
what is it that spiritual graffiti
that follows you big lettered "poet"
through halls asteroid
upon halls asteroid hellishly
what in what gentle way
will i fuck her tonight?
in her prime my twilit dancer
this place these prancing people
among these demonically cupie
my pulpit is shabby like dolls' shaved balls
i'm ultimate lush reverend drunk
the killer the pubic hair
caught in your coffee
so irish feel my name kiss me
swim around you in august heat
and the one who asked of me
where's your girlfriend at
what's her answer
where's her tropic where are you
this alliance these vague conversations
about studliness and self-reliance
kerouac i wish i were free too
my lowell my crop my lover so pre-
occupied me i'm so so pre-cummy
and there's this everything hooking up
and you should be too harbinger
warped by your binge wrapped around
spooked in your haunted closet

c. Andrew Lundwall 2007

Stacy Blair (Indiana, USA): Two Poems

A PERFECT CIRCLE IS...

A circle is what we talk in
and the hole in which our
words bury us; the bulging
blueberries I add with soymilk
to my matinale Grapenuts;
or the gears in my grandfather
clock, circling through time only
to double back. It is the hug
around my waist made by Elea
before she left for France; the sphere
of space made by lovers touching parted lips.

Multiple circles of time form from repetition;
circles circling into generations make
five-dimensional slinkies,
our faults repeat like History while
new mornings wonder at our perseverance,
curious hearts.

A circle is the top of my water bottle
cap removed on the night-stand,
shapes my dreams take as I
circle back from sleep to
the same hour I rose yesterday (it was yesterday).
A perfect circle is a blueberry and the shape of us going nowhere.

MAPS

We peaked together atop
this snow-covered mountain,
rolled down its spine,
whereupon a creamy
blue fog covered my glasses.

Now we repose in the field,
backs up against cherry-bulbs;
the suspended poplar,
eyes drifting to the coast.
From across that field of

for failed concoctions best left to chemists,
undertakers and impressionists. They see
a thing distantly: heart beats in calligraphy,

on a compass, the measure of a termite wing
ductile and trapped among cilia, taxidermied
dromedaries just to show us
what they're made of. Sequels scalpeled,
into skin like secrets now obsolete.

Call brush strokes obvious,
the use of plastics, morose.
If he gives you a rose,
do not knit him a blanket.

c. Melissa Severin 2007

Brooklyn Copeland (Carmel, Indiana, USA): Two fragments from Kerosene Series

Behind Washington the alley,
the rusted tracks.

Once, I disappeared for an afternoon.
I came back

with resin under my fingernails.

My Mother didn't know if she should be angry.

I could only tell her
that it'd been bleeding from a tree.

I didn't know the word resin.
Neither did she.

....................................................

Unblemished flesh wasted

on the modest

(parse, mince, parse, mince)

Molest: The way you singan alphabet
The page's sincerest commandssound us out; don't be scareden plein fouren plein air
(ended up

I married
a man
allergic to orchids)

c. Brooklyn Copeland 2009

Nick Moudry (Philadelphia, USA): "Victoria, High Quality"

I never speak to her anymore
I think when I am hello this is
a new notebook do you
like it yes I like & enjoy it
because I am supposed to because she
bought it for me because
when you call me it is easy to slip
into our familiar form of conversation

The neighbors above me are getting restless
it's cold I am sitting by the window it's cold
who reads letters or writes them
I write sound when I mean love or am
forced to write she says I love you
every minute of every day I
am forced to write I love you because my belly
hurts because she says I love you best

at night when you are not
forced to say goodbye I have too much
stuff to do & the hum of the
refrigerator is just that a hum
should I eat some cereal yeah cereal that's
good people don't need to fill
space with talking or feel longing when
no one is there or is

pretending to write letters she says
she loves me only when I am standing up
I am supposed to enjoy it
when she says she only loves me when I am
restless I am forced to write her letters nobody reads

c. Nick Moudry 2006

Stacy Blair (Indiana, USA): "Vieille fillette nocturne"

6:30 a.m. is when my heater keels over;
dried up somehow from the ice storm
which punctuated the night's prose on my

attic windows. This is where I live: the attic.
By 9 a.m. it's all slush, and my furnace is
hot and wet again. Cold shower: I need

one- present tense, of course. I will stop
not moving and wriggle a bit under covers,
twisting my body up in the blankets like

a fork in spaghetti. Three of them: not forks,
blankets. Three second-hand covers collected,
collect hair and skin samples from their human

domains: past, present, future. Who knows
how many have come before me, but I'll burn
this when I'm done. Maybe then, I'll light